Time for Tea..... The Portrait Restaurant, London

Hello there,

Welcome back to another afternoon tea post from Tea With Me and Friends, this time we have a lovely guest post for you from our Twitter friend Victoria who recently visited the Portrait Restaurant. Lets read about her London afternoon tea adventure.....

Trying to pick a venue for afternoon tea in London when you're from Rutland is no mean feat!  Thanks to another friend who lives in London, my friend Suzie and I chose the Portrait Restaurant for our afternoon tea.  Our criteria was "good, but not too smart", knowing we'd be needing a rest from all those galleries!

The Portrait Restaurant, run by Searcy, is on the top floor of the National Portrait Gallery so amazing views of London rooftops are the incredible backdrop.  Luckily, our table was next to the window and we could enjoy being almost eye to eye with Nelson on top of his column.  Due to the incredible view, the tables are packed in and it felt a little claustrophobic as we were weaving our way to our table.

Photo shows Suzie with our tea!

Quite radically, there was not a finger sandwich in sight.  The selection of savouries were a smoked salmon blini, a chicken brioche and a cucumber, dill and cream cheese sandwich on the tiniest slices of bread.  Sweet!  Possibly the only disappointment was that the bread for the cucumber sandwich was slightly dry.

Onto the scones in the middle.  All four scones were plain and fresh, to be served with strawberry jam and clotted cream.  Suzie apologised for cross-contaminating the jam and cream, but wolfing down the fluffy scones were the order of the day!  By this time we'd moved onto our second glass of champagne each, at a cost of £10 per glass.

Finally, the top tier.  Thankfully, there were two of each sweet treat so no arguing took place between us.  The mocha and gold leaf eclairs felt a little stale, but the rest of the top tier couldn't have been tastier!  Who would say no to a passion fruit macaroon, a mini fruit tart or, my favourite, the homemade bounty bar?  Not me!

All of this was washed down by Tregothnan loose leaf teas.  Divine!  Afternoon tea is £24.50 a head, with the champagne being charged as extra. 

Now doesn't that sound like a wonderful afternoon tea? I love the sound of the homemade bounty bar!

A huge thank you to Victoria and Suzie for sharing their afternoon tea with us - if you've enjoyed a tea that you would like to tell us about please get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel